[edit: I thank everyone for their comments and time. A lot of very interesting opinions and view points. Unfortunately also a lot of things that went away from the actual answer. So I’m thinking maybe this thread can be closed without deleting it?]
The more I hear people talk about it who aren’t cis-het men, the more I hear criticism about the concept. But so far, I’ve only heard people say that it’s stupid, that it’s not a thing, that it’s men’s own fault etc. But I’ve yet to understand where that criticism comes from. I don’t want to start a discussion on whether or not it’s real or not. I just want to understand where the critics are coming from.
A lot of people can’t see things from any perspective beyond their own limited worldview. If they don’t experience a problem, it doesn’t exist or it’s not that bad and everyone should focus on their problems instead or if they are experiencing something it must be happening to everyone. I think this is causing a lot of the conflict around this issue. There is also the fact that a lot of the men complaining about this issue come at it not so much as “I’m lonely” but as “I’m not getting laid”. Which loses them a lot of sympathy.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
I had no issue with connecting with most people I met 10+ years ago. But now it’s a struggle to even have a polite conversation with anyone under 50 for me, because their brains are so warped and they can’t take anything as is. I’ve had so many innocuous comments blow up in my face by younger folks who just leapfrog to the worst conclusions. For example I love reading classic literature… a lot of older pre 20th century stuff. That used to be something people admire. Now I get a lecture about how it makes me racist/sexist because the authors back then were all racist and sexist and if I am reading it i’m endorsing those views.
It’s insane. All the sudden my harmless hobby is now evil. I am also into cycling and I can’t talk about that now without being lectured or told how problematic it is for me to enjoy it. 10 years ago people would go ‘oh, that’s cool’. Now everything is a ‘problem’.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
100% that is the root of the loneliness epidemic and I agree that there is a problem. I was just trying to stick to answering OPs question about why we see opposition to the concept.
It’s also an issue to have this form of generation fight. We as older men, also have an obligation to question the old ways and listen to the young people. Because yes, a lot of it is a problem. And refusing to see the problem doesn’t make it not a problem. It just makes you part of it. Doesn’t make you evil to consume certain things. But it doesn’t help if you’re not compassionate with the current views and the emotions of the younger people around you. Most people don’t even want to make anyone stop doing something, but they’d be happy to know that you’re questioning it.
It’s also an issue to have this form of generation fight. We as older men, also have an obligation to question the old ways and listen to the young people
No we don’t. I am an older man and I am dealing with all this nonsense myself. the old ways were objectively better for connecting and forming relationships. The new ways only foster shallow connections. I’d rather live in analog reality than some delusional social media bubble also.
Yeah…we are so well connected and socialised. The old ways have really proved themselves…
On a related note, I wish we would acknowledge that men socialize different and that guys doing stuff together is therapeutic. Ruminating on emotions can have a negative effect in men, while work therapy can be much effective that talk therapy.
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that would be acknowledging that men and women are different and that’s bad in 2025, apparently.
I think there is definitely a male loneliness epidemic but I think there is also an equally bad female loneliness epidemic that nobody talks about enough
Modern online incel and radfem movements were created to pit them against each other and prevent them from uniting and creating positive social change.
Created by whom? I’m actually curious.
I can’t prove anything, but:
- There’s evidence that billionaires are taking much more than they earn, and that we (everyone else) would be dramatically better off without them (whether we tax them away or… Come to some other compromise.)
- Billionaires own most media outlets and social media sites, even those these don’t actually make much money compared to everything else the billionaires own. This makes some people ask why they bother…
- There’s a noticable tendency in billionaire owned media to focus daily on divisive topics. The specific topic changes, but the divisiveness continues.
- There is history of powerful authoritarians investing heavily in divisive propaganda, primarily to break apart and distract groups of people who could overthrow them.
What I have laid out is not proof that today’s billionaires are directing their staff to verbally attack minorites at any opportunity.
But it certainly is something to think about next time a vicious rumor about a minority group comes along.
Edit: Yes. I do understand that neither men nor women are minorities. But there’s still enough differences to allow pushing a divisive narrative, which I suspect is enough reason for certain motivated people.
And to the “could just be a shitty set of incentives” argument. Fair enough. It could be. It’s highly suspicious, but it could be.
Woah, I thought you were talking about a conspiracy of wealthy people that are pitting the sexes against each other. That is interesting and I want to study this some more.
Somehow you ended on wealthy people hating on minorities. Let me make this clear. This happens all the fucking time. Even our POTUS is guilty of this multiple times with instances like the Central Park Five.
I mean the whole anti-woke movement is just a bunch of rich racist assholes pushing a toxic message.
I’m not the original person you were speaking to but this is a good example of systemic issues. You don’t need individuals to be racist or sexist or conspire to do bad things if there’s a systemic trend that people in powerful positions are a homogeneous class with their own relatively aligned interests and social circles.
Billionaires don’t know poor people, billionaires are usually white men, billionaires have similar self interest. Billionaires wield a huge amount of power. BOOM. systemic racism and sexism without requiring everyone to scheme and coordinate.
This is why liberals fixate on gender and race representation in higher positions, and this is why I and other leftists just want to dismantle unbalanced power structures that give billionaires everything and allow them to exist.
Eliminating billionaires would do far more to harm fascism than all the DEI initiatives combined.
100%, liberals won’t let go of the root causes of the problems and will keep patching and reforming and patching and reforming all the while every little crisis brings fascism back from the shadows
themselves
I think what’s happening is:
40% of men are good people
40% of women are good people
The remaining 20% are pieces of shit that demonize and demean the other sex, which has caused the 80% to become scared and reclusive.
Social media makes it seem like the percentages are flipped but they are not!
The numbers are made up but you get my point.
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they both exist. but the male one makes people angry so it gets more engagement. it’s also framed as ‘men are losers who need to do better in life’
the female one is often framed as ‘women are too successful for men’.
the truth is there is a huge gender disparity emerging in certain demographics. my own included. most single women I meet in my 30s/40s are living radically different lives than the men. and frankly i haven’t had a relationship in half a decade because none of the women I meet anymore have anything in common with me, and often they view our differences in a very negative light. 10 years ago those differences were seen as positive.
there are also no common spacers for us to mingle anymore. esp not as equals.
I felt all bitter like you did but I met a girl recently who completely stole my heart, they do exist for sure
Very good point about common spaces. The best we got in north america is basically just the mall at this point
Also there are no safe spaces for men outside of wilderness and AA meetings hahaha
Am I bitter that we are entering a recession? Or is it just a fact of the world?
I think it has to do with the death of 3rd spaces which used to be an outlet for socialization. But as a man, I’m also not lonely. I have friends and acquaintances and I get to go outside sometimes.
This right here. But even for our parents this is true.
I remember back when we could easily get some beers and sit at the local park or at the riverbed. But now? Everything’s private property and the bars are way too expensive to spend 5 hours in. I don’t know the last time I played Billard - or even have seen a pool table itself.
In the 2000s I could go out drinking for an entire night for like $20. Or I could hang out in a cafe with a sandwich and a coffee for $10.
Now two beers is $25 and that’s an hour if you nurse them slow. Wanna hang out for 2+ hours anyplace? Goign to cost you probably $50-100. Even bowling a frame is now like 75/pp in my city
Can we please leave gender war slop back at the old site please?
Men, by and large, create toxicity within their own circles. Male culture has a lot of issues and a lot of unrealistic expectations are put in men in US society. Some external, but the majority come from inside. The whole alpha male culture bullshit that permeantes it. There’s a lot, and I mean a LOT of good that can come from healthy male culture. But right now it’s like men have a branding issue where the loudest among them are also the worst (the Andrew Tates of the world).
I’d say there’s some unavoidable bias there. If we judge the dominant masculine culture by the degree to which people emphasize masculinity then of course the loud ultra masculine people will seem like the representation.
Lots of men out there just being men
Lots of men out there just being men
True. But nobody cares about them because they aren’t bothering anyone. But they do get lumped in with the controversial men.
Like I don’t have much of a clue about Tate or any of that stuff. But if I tell people that then I’m guilty of ignorance or something and I need to ‘educate’ myself about that stuff so I can… denounce it? Because apparently just not knowing or caring is complicity or something.
It’s true that men as a broad group have a duty to confront and correct that behavior within their social groups and families etc. and that might be where that sentiment is coming from, but we live in a world where people can and do live in bubbles.
No. We don’t. We don’t have a duty to do anything anymore than women do.
Other people’s ignorance isn’t my obligation to fix. It’s their own. I am not responsible for other people’s behavior and anyone who blames me for it is an asshole. Guilt by association is a fallacy.
If you’re not calling out that kind of behavior when you encounter it among your social group then you are definitely complicit. Is it a morally corrupt position? Not necessarily, but you’re complicit and you’re enabling it.
Calling out shitty behaviour gets you shitcanned from the group. It doesn’t change the behaviour. Do you socialize much? You don’t make friends or get popular by calling out bad behaviour. You get ostracized. The rest of the group calls you an asshole and circles the wagons and enables the behaviour further.
ok, keep your asshole friends and be associated with them I guess? point proven?
I have no idea but thought I’d throw out that, as a 58yr old cis white guy I’ve never been lonely in my life, i have literally no idea what that’s like and don’t get involved in hypotheses about it all because I have nothing to bring to the debate. I do find human behaviour interesting (and mostly bizzare) though.
The more time I spend with people the more I crave being alone but that’s a different thing.
I now live on the edge of a tiny village in the middle of no where Australia and lived in a small cottage off grid in the bush for 10 years previously bit alos loved in an apartment in the sky in a largish city.
One thing I noticed, I found the car free existence ina city bought me into contact with people all the time, even walking you’d see people people and say hello. Stop at a crossing and have a small conversation occasionally etc. i even said hello to women and was never called a pervert ;)
Who says this? I am not a cis-het man and have not heard the criticism. I thought it was a known thing? Are you literally hearing it doesn’t exist, or is it more like they need to suck it up and/or that they are losers that need to go outside?
If it’s the second, that’s sexism. That’s where it comes from. Illogical ideas about men. Believe it or not, we have not overcome that yet. People have very twisted ideas about how men and women should behave and feel.
I think part of it also depends on were you live. Just as a personal experience I live in a very rural part of northern Nevada, I’m born a raised here. The population is about 4k and honestly I would say 90% of the population are hardcore conservatives. Even as a kid I knew that I didn’t fit in with anyone else. I would usually just keep to myself all throughout school and even now as a 42 year old man I barely speak to anyone. It is lonely but the alternative is a no go for me especially now with politics being such a big part of peoples identity.
Being a man is tricky. Full grown males can be physically dangerous and I think there is a subtle undercurrent of worry with all men they may be dealing with a hostile moron, or a worry someone may try to assert dominance. Men are organically closed off past a certain age because of this.
Men also experience allot of these weird power dynamics growing up. Both men and women kind of seek to control and bully youger boys and men until they come into their own…and suddenly they are grown and terrifying in some respects and everyone magically backs the f*** off. The threat is gone but the history is still there and it closes men off emotionally.
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I kind of assume it’s the juxtaposition of “I as a white man have immense social privilege” with “I can’t get anyone to play with me”. Like, other people are worried about being abducted on the street and you’re sad you can’t play basketball with your bros?
The sadness of loneliness can be real but in contrast to other things it can feel like it needs to be triaged into a lower priority. And then some men lose their shit over that, which makes people take them less seriously.
most white men don’t have much social privileged.
it’s only the top 5-10% who have the privledge
For example, white men will generally have an easier time in public spaces. Police and shops are less likely to bother them.
privilege doesn’t mean “you have a yacht” or “you’re rich”
and if you’re black/Hispanic and you dress in a suit they won’t bother you either. esp if you hold yourself like a rich douchebag
but if you’re white and tattooed and look homeless, they will totally bother you.
It’s about class. class trumps race and sex, everytime.
Please go read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege and the related articles, such as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
Both is kinda true. Yes, a poor black man will be worse off than a poor white man and a middle-class black man will be worse off than a middle-class white man and so on.
But a poor white man will be worse off than a middle-class black man and a rich white man will be better off than a middle-class white man.
That’s what intersectionality means: All these things stack together instead of wiping eachother out.
If intersectionality wasn’t a thing, then any black man will always have less privilege than any white man, no matter any other circumstances. And that’s obviously crap, considering that clearly someone like Barak Obama or Will Smith has much more social privilege than any random white homeless guy.
No. I have a minor in gender studies. You can pretend Wikipedia is some sort of definitive source of truth all you want because it fits your simplified narrative of race and sex.
Reality is far more complex than that though.
I don’t believe you. Sorry.
I don’t believe you. Not sorry.
Oh my god STOP WITH THE GENDER DEBATES
Some is valid. Men aren’t taught how to make and maintain emotionally open friendships, with men or women. It’s seen as weak or weird to cry on front of your bros when you’re sad. This leads to loneliness. This is real.
Some is not valid. Men claiming that they’re not getting laid and it’s women’s fault is bullshit. Or that women have impossibly high standards and are gold diggers. It’s nonsense.
The problem is that the “women hating incels” have coopted the term, and their garbage deserves to be mocked.
The sheer number of men who suddenly have no support in their life because their relationship has ended, that soon struggle with suicidal thoughts should really point to the first thing you said. Men and women are socialized differently as children and this is one of the most common results when we reach adulthood. It will take an enormous shift in society and ingrained values to fix that
That second point, yeah, women don’t need to get married to survive now. My grandmother couldn’t have her own bank account when she was a young adult, and banks would have laughed her out of town if she wanted a mortgage. My parents got married young because that was still kind of expected, especially in rural America. I haven’t dated in years, because it’s frustrating, and I have been able to, and lucky enough, to buy a home on my own finances. That’s not high standards, it’s just that I didn’t need to get hitched to have financial stability
The sheer number of men who suddenly have no support in their life because their relationship has ended
Do men really not have any friends? I just moved to a new country and made like 5 close friends in the first few months, so that blows my mind in a sad way
Nope. Not as we age. All my friends moved away, started families, or changed to the point we have nothing in common anymore.
And once you are 30+ it’s really really hard to form close friendships. At best you get to form very tangential/shallow ones. I am 40 and I haven’t met anyone who has become my friend for well over a decade. The last friend I formed was like when I was 32.
And once you are 30+ it’s really really hard to form close friendships
I really don’t think age has much to do with it. I’m finding it easier in my 30s than my 20s since people are more adult and less likely to play stupid games
speak for yourself. my experience is it’s way harder and people are way more stupid and judgemental. nobody cared what car i drove. now people find out I ‘only’ own a Honda and they want nothing to do with me anymore because i am ‘not doing well in life’ if i don’t own luxury car.
At some point, I got quite some worried/pitiful look because i didn’t own a car but only a (non-motorized) bike. People are weird!
In the other hand, I got along with people wanting to make our own “bike gang”, aka commuting to work together.
It doesn’t sound like you’re surrounding yourself with the best people. They sound quite superficial if all they care about is perceived status
Where are these mythical best people?
Because literally everyone I’ve entire life I’ve met, cares about superficial stuff like status and material things. Every friend, every girlfriend, every family member. People admire you if you have money, and hate you if you don’t.
I’m not a cis man, but every man I’ve dated has had “friends”, but not people they can really talk to. Like, one guy I dated had a really big social circle and they regularly had gaming events. But he didn’t text or talk to anyone outside of planning and going to those events. Others had maybe one friend that they hung out with outside of work.
It is sad. And it was jarring when I was young, because I had lots of friends I could turn to on a bad day or for something more serious. It makes me so angry with “the patriarchy”, because it isn’t just keeping women down, it’s also hurting and sometimes killing men.
I had a cat die a very painful and sad death right in the veterinarian’s parking lot. I was completely devastated, but my poor boyfriend kept trying to hold back his tears because he “needed to be strong” for me. Bitch no, cry with me, that was super heavy. I’m going to carry that death with me until I die, and not just because my cat didn’t deserve that. It’s not fair for men to have this expectation that they need to hold back expressing emotion so they appear strong. (that particular ex also has a fear of dying, so he really needed to and should have felt free to express himself at that time)
I was completely devastated, but my poor boyfriend kept trying to hold back his tears because he “needed to be strong” for me. Bitch no, cry with me, that was super heavy.
Yes, because most cis het women in this situation would have rejected him. I have been there. I was dumped by a 5 year girlfriend over the death of my father. She was disgusted with my ‘whining’ and thought it was pathetic that I was sad/struggling with it. I’ve never met anyone in my life besides my sister/brother who wasn’t disgusted by expressions of sadness, let alone tears. Almost any girlfriend I had, if I was in any kind of emotional distress, ended the relationship almost immediately thereafter because they don’t want to be with someone who is ‘weak’ and has emotions. And they always say it’s ok. They might let you cry. But they are viscerally disgusted with you afterwards.
I’m so are you went through that. I remember how surprised my then-boyfriend was when he had a bad day and I helped him out, listened to him, and did not hold it against him. He was utterly shocked, while at the same time he had been helping me deal with much heavier shit that was impacting my daily life…
This ideal that men are 100% tough sucks so much.
It makes me so angry with “the patriarchy”, because it isn’t just keeping women down, it’s also hurting and sometimes killing men.
I agree, I wish more men would realize that feminism also benefits men. Even things as small as being able to freely express yourself are hurt by the patriarchy
This is going to sound ridiculous, but I believe the perceived etymology of the word ‘feminism’ hurts the intent of the movement.
The word seems to imply that women should be put first, not as equals. Think of ‘nationalism’, those following that put their nation first, sometimes to the point of being derogatory to other nations.
So when uneducated hear the word feminism they may think it’s an ideology of putting women first to the point of being derogatory to men.
pragmatically, most men and most women, who are feminists, think women are superior to men. and you’ll notice their arguments are all about how men should be more like women, and never women should be like men.
It doesn’t help that some people misuse it that way either
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Men suffer under patriarchy, bro. It isn’t women exploiting your insecurities to sell you magic pills and creams for a bigger dick and more testerone, masculinity retreats, or super secret techniques for making them drop their panties.
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Depends. I find making new friends very difficult because I don’t have many of the same interests and the rest of the people that I naturally get exposed to via my kids, wife or life. I work from home and don’t have much time for social hobbies. I go to concerts sometimes but I really struggle to make conversation with strangers. I can see how someone like me would end up being lonely for a long time.
Social hobbies are where it’s at. I’ve never met anyone meaningful at a concert. Hobbies (and activism) though, all the people all the time.
“Don’t have much time”… I guess it it’s important to you, you should figure out how to make time for it
Having a 6 and 8 year old is very time consuming! The good news is I have 2 nights a week of D&D which gets me a bit of social time. Though not face to face.
True that.
Just getting in to TTRPGs properly. It seems like a way to really solidify friendships, rather than to find new ones. But that’s still very valuable!
I’m having trouble making friends. There is one guy sort of near me and we do things here and there, but he and his wife are about to move. Most of my other friends live far away.
I don’t have a lot in common with the people I work with, or live near, and I don’t have much energy to do things outside of work. There is more that I’d say but I’m acutely aware / paranoid that some ai tool is reading all of our comments and building profiles on us. I’m trying to build a better life and find more communities where I feel welcome, but it’s slow going. Maybe that explains it somewhat?
Maybe you could tell us how you made 5 close friends in a new country.
I knew of one person here prior to moving though we never actually met beforehand. Also met up with an internet friend at some point.
Aside from those two, my partner and I searched for community events and went to quite a few. Met a lot of people there. Community events are honestly a fantastic jumping off point. Ideally things where you actually get a chance to talk to people, check out local bars’ socials to see if there’s anything.
Also made one or two friends randomly just hanging at a park.
The trick is that after you meet someone, you have to make an effort to see them again. Once you have a few close friends it’s easier to get invited to other things.
Tbh, while I could start drinking more again just to meet people, bars are expensive these days. I can’t afford friends nor dates. Unless maybe I only eat ramen forever.
Finding someone romantic/friends is difficult when you haven’t fully AA quit drinking, but you’re also disillusioned with hammered bar culture and driving drunk and don’t want to do that anymore, and also would rather spend your money on not $10 Evan Williams and gingers all night when they don’t even have the good Evan which only costs like $30 for a giant bottle.
That follow up is brutal and crucial.
Not her but I am a woman who moved across my country and made friends within a few months. It’s social hobbies and active participation in subcultural events. I love bicycles, years back I got into volunteering at a bicycle repair cooperative, it made me some casual friends with whom I hung out working on bikes every other week. When I moved I found one to volunteer at again, though I haven’t started yet. Similar social hobbies/volunteering are great. And for subculture stuff, its just that that’s a really great way to find casual hang out events if you have a subculture you’re interested in. I know goths all over have bar nights, as do plenty of other communities. It just serves as a really quick and easy “hey we have this in common” starter.
When in doubt, look up events happening in your area and check out any that interest you. Chat with folks when you’re at them.
I don’t have much energy to do things outside of work
Nothing else you said matters apart from this. You can’t really make friends when you refuse to do anything where you would meet people or turn colleagues into friends.
I am the exception that proves the rule in a way. I am EXTREMELY open with my mental state and emotions. If I have known you for more than a few hours/days (or even minutes if there’s a connection of some kind) I will gladly explain to you exactly how badly I crave the sweet embrace of death. How long I have felt that. Why I feel that.
Men react in strange ways to that.
Women react in what you would probably call a predictable way. They are concerned, try to ask for reasons and offer comfort.
Men are sometimes curious, but most often, they just say, “same.” There isn’t always discussion about it after that but I don’t really meet men who have not considered suicide. It’s so pervasive.
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Men aren’t taught how to make and maintain emotionally open friendships,
If this was true… Why is this an issue only now?
Or all these men were lonely in the closet?
I would guess it has something to do with the loss of third places.
That’s definitely a factor… Suburban experiment is objective failure on many levels but it has also to do with cost of being out.
Can’t go to bars or restaurants anymore. Shit is too expensive for normal income person to sustain in any meaningful way.
Also, DUIs but that ties into first point.
A lot of social organizations that men had used started dying. I have a friend who runs a freemason lodge and he struggles to get people to join. Other similar social clubs have also fallen by the wayside. Similarly the decline of long term geographic community has been brutal and people are less likely to get to know their neighbors or become regulars at the local bar.
I see a lot of talk about how women’s liberation and the power to leave a bad marriage has been a component, but I suspect otherwise, having grown up with parents in a failing marriage. I strongly suspect that what a lot of these lonely men need is friends and community in a way that even a loving wife won’t cut it, much less a cold and distant wife and resentful children.
It’s easier to not care about a guy’s mental health when he’s married, even if it’s a shitty marriage. How can he be lonely if he has a wife, after all?
I’m happy for divorces. I’m happy for the increase in male loneliness BEING NOTICED. It used to just be the guy would work all day, or drink himself to death silently, to avoid the issue.
But the next step has to be for guys to be open to make emotional friendships.
Yeah as a woman I see a certain portion of men who seem to want to push resolving male loneliness onto women. But like, we genuinely can only help here. If men want advice from women on how to make friends and find community, we can do that, but like, even if the friends a man makes are women we didnt fix his loneliness, he went out and made friends and was vulnerable and supportive and got supported in kind.
And that’s why the incel culture is so popular. Anytime you have a hard problem, and pitch that it’s someone else’s responsibility to fix, people will love that.
Poor people " just need to work harder", immigrants " just need to come in the right way", women " just need to be less picky", and I don’t have to change or help.
It’s not an issue only now. But we’re more isolated than before because we lost our third spaces and communities. Bunch of lonely wolves.
Yep. Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone” turns 25 this year, and it’s as relevant as ever.
Its gotten worse because women are no longer forced to stay in or get into shitty, unfulfilling marriages. Men before had guaranteed companionship in the sense that it was societally and financially expected for a woman to stay in a relationship and provide emotional (and physical) companionship. With women becoming more independent, they’re able to leave abusive situations or to avoid getting into them in the first place.
Therefore, if men are not socialized to maintain friendships and no one is being forced to emotionally support them anymore, then they are lonely.
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When people have created a narrative that “white x y z men” are responsible for all the evil in the world (I’m exagerating, but you get my drift), it creates a very difficult situation when those people are facing some serious difficulties. The intellectually lazy thing to do in that case is to brush it off or minimize it, like in the ways you’ve described. And unfortunately, that’s the route those same people will take, since identity politics are intellectually lazy (and lacking compassion, but that’s another story).
The unfortunate part of it is that the right has taken advantage of that wide open flank, which is one main reasons we’re in this current clusterfuck.
The comment section here speaks for itself.
These idiots are still doing the culture war when we should be fighting the class war.
Blaming a bunch of 20s something losers for “patriarchy” is peak useful idiot behaviour.
That flank. Sigh. I remember the turn after Occupy. It went from economics to being cool to just broadly bash men. I specifically remember outspoken, angry women at marches and protests and was like wait, where did the economics go? Like 60% of Republicans wanted wealth reform during occupy. It unfortunately coincided with really great–though apparently transitory–improvements in lgbtq rights. It was so weird to me that self-labeling “feminists” were suddenly talking like it was a zero sum game; for women to rise and improve and build and grow, men had to be put down. That is of course the language of someone seeking power, a charlatan, but it became quite normal. Even questioning the broad criticism of men wasn’t appropriate in “liberal” press or circles for a good decade. The whole "yeah but bashing men isn’t right/fair or clumsy” finally started working into the Atlantic, NYT and other large publications in 2023 but the damage had been done.
It of course drove lots of men right to the tall radio, podcasters–and those were young adults then–i can’t imagine what it was like growing up since then as a young person with the normalization of some of this stuff.
It was all intentional. It sounds like a conspiracy theory but these elites have access to how many decades of psychological research (or their employees do at any rate) to be used in marketing to make people think and feel WHATEVER THE POWERFUL WANT to an extent. that’s what marketing is:manipulations. Most of it is used to drive capital upwards. But it can be easily subverted to distract and deflect attention from those at the top. Media would spin pieces about male aggression, algorithms would make sure they get into the right feeds.
It’s all absolutely psychopathic. When done on an entire population, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work very well or works great (people are amazingly easy to manipulate) the average will be a noticeable shift in the direction they intend. Over years, we get fascism. Yaaaayyy…
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Good dog
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Ouch you got me
Hell yeah fight that culture war!
